


Basic Social Interactions, the Coda of Sherlock and John

by Project0506



Series: Introduction to Basic Social Interactions [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:45:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to 'Introductions to Basic Social Interactions'.  How John and Sherlock became John and Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This is how their relationship theoretically starts:

John is reading a novel, something light and trashy with a mystery Sherlock has solved from reading the blurb and John has since forbidden him from mentioning. Sherlock is sprawled along the couch, tapping away on John’s laptop and muttering something under his breath. It is a typical damp day in London, and rain is pattering soothingly on the window pane.

“We should fuck,” Sherlock says, and pauses with the air of someone waiting for the other person to start an argument they really want to have.

John carefully marks where he is in the book, closing it around his index finger and giving Sherlock his full attention. There is silence in the room, save for an old clock loudly ticking in the corner. John closes his eyes a moment, then goes back to his book.

“After I finish this chapter,” he says, and proceeds to ignore Sherlock for twenty minutes to do just that.

After, they fuck.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It starts, as almost everything does with Sherlock, as an experiment. It was some social thingamajig he was explaining at some point or another. John had tuned him out by then. The basic premise, from what John interpreted, was that Sherlock was bored and there was some magical logic in the middle that ended with them having sex. John wasn’t particularly complaining. Sherlock was fit, and it was pretty much a given that John was attracted to him. Plus, with their lifestyle it was basically impossible to keep a relationship with anyone else. There’s this thing people have with being shot at on a regular basis that is typically a turn off. 

So John hasn’t had sex in a while, Sherlock is willing and it’s not like he’s never imagined it.

They go to John’s room because who knows what is in Sherlock’s. It’s good, pretty good. Not sensational but Sherlock isn’t the virgin John had half suspected. He’s thorough and they’re more than compatible and they end the afternoon sweaty and pleasantly sated. Once he catches his breath Sherlock makes to leave, but can’t seem to dislodge the arm John plants around his middle.

“John,” he warns.

“Shut up,” John replies, and he does, and they sleep for about an hour and a half before Sherlock gets bored and wanders off.


	2. Chapter 2

This is how their relationship technically starts: 

It’s a case that ends bitterly, with a dead hostage and perpetrator. The general consensus is that Sherlock is cold, heartless, but the general consensus is wrong. The kidnapper puts the little girl on the phone when he kills her. She is talking to Lestrade, on speaker, and Sherlock’s hands clench at the bang and her sudden silence. John hustles him out of the room before Donovan can open her mouth and set him off.  
The next forty hours he spends following Sherlock who is after his man with a vicious determination, only to be foiled when the man turns his gun on himself. There is no satisfaction, no closure.

No justice, and despite opinions to the contrary, Sherlock very much believes in that.

He is angry and bitter and unable to hold still for even a moment. Mrs. Hudson takes one look at his face and makes herself scarce. John doesn’t blame her. He stays though, picking up things Sherlock tips over, sweeping up shards of whatever he’s broken. There is a stretch of silence, and John puts down the dustpan and turns.

Sherlock is watching him, eyes wide and dull. “John,” he says and it’s angry and frustrated and defeated and John crosses the room in a second. Sherlock goes without fight or complaint when John tucks him into his chest. They have their first proper kiss there, in the wreckage of their living room, and before long John is pulling Sherlock into his bed, undressing him and making the kind of slow, soft love to him that he would have never allowed before.

Sherlock is still there in the morning: reading and scribbling notes nearly indecipherably. He is working on, no doubt, a hundred different things at once because his brain can never be quiet. But he is still there.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The thing to remember with Sherlock is that he gets bored very, very quickly. They switch off who will top, and those days that John tops are the days their sex is rough and fast. When Sherlock tops he explores, teases, and puts all the biology he’s stored up in his mind to filthy use. When John tops, Sherlock doesn’t have the patience for that kind of reciprocation.

Sherlock needs to be in a very particular mood before they will do anything slow and savoured. He’s not subtle with his tells, and John has quickly learned to read the sprawl of his limbs, the tilt of his head and the set of his eyes. He knows when Sherlock wants to be in his lap, wants to play or wants to be kissed sweet and deep. The last is what they do most often, and John suspects it’s rather because he loves Sherlock’s lips instead of any particular fondness of Sherlock’s.

He burns those memories deep into his mind, of the times when they take hours teasing and tasting. The few that they are are so very precious to John, all the more valuable for their rarity.


	3. Chapter 3

This is how their relationship starts:

Sherlock is enjoying himself being a right arsehole, and John really, really wants to punch him.

He hates days like these, when Sherlock wakes up with the urge to be a berk to everyone he meets and delights in it. He’s swooping around, insulting and generally making everyone miserable. More than once John has had to physically restrain himself from slapping him.

Early in the afternoon he’s pulled aside and generously bribed with things scavenged from the station break room to take Sherlock anywhere but here. Lestrade, though by now it’s Greg due to mutual commiseration over the diva that is Sherlock, is convinced someone is going to bludgeon him to death or at least stitch his mouth closed with a stapler.

The ride home is no better, with Sherlock making snide observations of everyone they pass getting more and more childish as the time went on. By the time they pull up to 221B John is fuming and more than ready to turn Sherlock over his knee like the child he is affecting. Mrs. Hudson is in the hallway and Sherlock stops to ‘chat’ with her and before he even opens his mouth, John has had enough.

“Sorry Mrs. Hudson,” he breaks in quickly, with a heavy hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “We’ve got some things to take care of.”

It would not be much of an understatement to say John frog-marches Sherlock into their flat. The door is barely closed before Sherlock is rounding on him, eyes flashing and lips spewing more of the poisonous filth he’s been at all day. He’s aiming insults at his medical ability right now, and that’s how John knows he’s reaching. Of all the things John’s ashamed of, his practice is not on that list.

He’s got a grip on the back of Sherlock’s neck and another on his wrist and he is forcing him down, down, until his knees crumble and he tumbles forward, saved from faceplanting by the very hands that forced him down.

“No,” John says, cutting off whatever it was Sherlock was planning to say next. “I’m done with this. It stops. Now.” The hand, heavy on Sherlock’s neck, pushes his head down to a shallow bow and holds it there./p>

There is surprising, immediate silence.

Sherlock’s spine is stiff with shock, but his head bent obediently. They both know if he struggled enough John would let go, of course he would. John’s annoyed, but would never risk hurting Sherlock. Slowly John releases the arm he has twisted part way behind Sherlock, watching it fall easily to his side, and running his hand down the line of his back.

“You’re going to be quiet right now,” John says, and slowly, slowly presses Sherlock down further and further until his forehead touches the carpet. There is a shaky gasp of air and Sherlock lets go completely, sliding and curling until he has is chest pressed to his knees and his head all the way down.

John sits, side aligned with Sherlock’s and his hand never leaving Sherlock’s neck. He can feel the confusion and wariness the other man is radiating. This, whatever this was, was not one of the expected outcomes he had considered when he decided to bait John. And oh, John knew it was baiting, knew that Sherlock wanted a reaction out of him, and had decided to give him one.

He tangles his fingers deep in the hair at the base of Sherlock’s neck and tugs hard. There is a gasp, and a squirm and a quiet mutter of protest, but Sherlock doesn’t move.

“Good boy,” John breathes, and everything between them up until that one moment changes.


	4. Chapter 4

He’s only had to cane Sherlock once. 

They had agreed that caning was a last resort punishment.  It was something that Sherlock most emphatically did _not_ enjoy and associated with his days at boarding school.  The little John gleaned let him understand that Sherlock had had a miserable experience at boarding school, and he could very much understand that.  For a too-smart little boy with too little social knowledge it was almost a given that his school days would be hell. Children were cruel.

So he only caned Sherlock once.  There was just that one stunt he pulled that really needed it.

He had heard it from Greg long before Sherlock himself.  Greg had been there when John had had to go back to using his cane, and through the days where John had nearly fallen apart.  He had texted John immediately, so John was home and prepared when Sherlock walks back into 221B a year after dying.

He doesn’t do it that first night, or any night that month.  He’s too angry, far too angry and he had vowed to Sherlock when they started this whatever-it-is that he would never, ever hit him while furious.  It takes nearly a month for him to calm down enough to trust himself with anything like that.  A month of Sherlock’s regret, of walking around with uncharacteristic hesitance, of him wondering if he’s allowed back in the bed that’s become theirs.

(He is.)

But it’s a month before they do anything besides ‘vanilla’ sex, because John just doesn’t trust himself.

It’s a Sunday evening, when Mrs. Hudson is out visiting relatives when John asks Sherlock to get the cane he spent nearly a year using to walk.

He keeps a strict count as he swings it.  He never misses a count once, never loses his place.  He is methodical and heavy handed and by the end of it Sherlock’s legs and ass are deep red and purple and bruising.  Sherlock has silent tears streaming down his face but it is John who is weeping.

They sit on the floor of the living room, John clutching Sherlock as though he will never let go, Sherlock whispering pleas and apologies into the skin of John’s neck.

He doesn’t promise not to do it again though, and shudders when John asks him to.  He stiffens, and his begs redouble when John pulls them back to standing and leans him back over the arm of the couch.

He doesn’t safe-word, even as John lays more and more on top of the forming bruises.  Again and again they repeat until John is satisfied.  The cane splinters on one crack and John tosses it aside, wary that it will break and the shards cause unintended damage.  He trades it for his belt and his arm and back is burning and knee throbbing before Sherlock finally, finally gasps the words he needs to hear.

“Swear it,” John demands.

“I swear,” Sherlock chokes, barely able to talk.

It’s a long fight they have ahead of them, John knows.  It’s a long way to go before Sherlock understands things that most people take for granted.  But it will start here, with John taking care of Sherlock and soothing his battered ass and legs, and keeping him in bed and on his stomach until he can stand without pain.  It will start one step at a time, and John will make damn sure they take each step together.


End file.
